America's long foreign policy coma regarding China is over

It has recognised China as a present, systemic competitor rather than a possible transitional partner.

- DANIEL WAGNER

(DANIEL WAGNER)

For much of the first quarter of the 21st century, American policymakers treated China as an economic phenomenon to be managed rather than a systemic competitor to be challenged and stopped.

The result was not only China's inexorable rise, but America’s decline in the foreign policy arena. Washington was effectively comatose until 2017, while Beijing was cunningly executing a strategy designed to achieve its long-term foreign policy objectives, with what amounted to a wink and nod from the Americans. One need look no further than China’s expropriation of the Spratly Islands, de facto expropriation of territory in the Philippines’ territorial waters, and the execution of the Belt and Road Initiative to see this.

Beijing approached globalization not as a neutral process, but as a target rich environment to be taken advantage of. It fused state power, capital allocation, technology policy, diplomacy, and institutional engagement into a unified strategy focused on accumulating long-term advantage. The US, by contrast, compartmentalized—separating trade from security, markets from geopolitics, and short-term efficiency from long-term resilience. This divergence produced a period of strategic sedation.

The US assumed that integration would produce convergence, that rules would constrain behaviour, and that time favoured transparency. China assumed the exact opposite: that competition was permanent, rules were tools to be used for strategic advantage, and that time favoured those who deployed their resources wisely.